“Being legally right is only half the story,” developer says of “wrongful claim.”

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Update - July 18:River City Ransom Underground developer Conatus says it will change the soundtrack to the game because, in short, "we can’t spend another minute thinking about the false DMCA complaints filed against us and our YouTube and Twitch community."

Conatus writes in a post on the game's Steam community page today that the company's lawyers have assured them Alex Mauer's DMCA claim has "no legal basis" and that she was fully paid for the rights to her subcontracted music work on the Kickstarter-funded game. But the developers are not eager to face the prospect of proving that in order to fight the game's DMCA takedown request on Steam.

"Being legally right is only half the story," Conatus writes. "As a practical matter, the costs of legal action would put console development plans on hold, perhaps indefinitely. We don't have any interest in spending our time and our energy dealing with this matter further."

Conatus expressed dismay that the hard work of so many developers "could be thrown into disarray so easily and so unjustly." That said, the team writes that a new soundtrack is "the best chance that RCR:U has of achieving a 'clean break' from any negative associations with Alex Mauer’s wrongful claim. My hope is that when the creators and I think about this game or the years of our lives that have gone into creating it, we see the game for what it is: a beautiful, if imperfect, realization of the vision and work of many, rather than the controversy that came after."

Conatus' move follows a long history of questionable behavior from Mauer, as extensively documented by SirTapTap here. That includes a slew of DMCA requests against YouTubers covering RCR:U and other games she worked on, alleged death threats against YouTubers, and the legal representation fighting a DMCA claim against Starr Mazer DSP.

Despite Conatus' detailed denial, Mauer maintains in a recent interview with Kotaku that she was "cut out of the deal" for her work on the game, and that the company hasn't "gotten my permission" to use that music. "They can easily get my permission, but they need to be transparent with me about whatever deal they made regarding the music."

Original Story

River City Ransom Underground was removed from Steam late last week, part of an unfolding legal drama surrounding a composer who has been directing DMCA copyright-infringement takedowns at games she says don't have the rights to her music.

Conatus' Andrew Russell, one of the developers of River City Ransom Underground, said in a short statement that "we are aware that RCRU is down on Steam. We have contacted Valve's copyright department, and will let you know when access is restored." But composer Alex Mauer confirmed to Destructoid that the removal was the result of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request she made against the title.

"Conatus never got my written permission to use my music in the game," Mauer told the site. "As far as I know, they have Disasterpeace's [one of the game's composers] signature and are trying to act like that alone is enough to have secured rights."

Mauer has previously issued DMCA takedown notices for a number of RCRU YouTube videos that she says feature her music without permission. Conatus took to the Steam forums earlier this month to clarify that the company was not behind those YouTube requests and to defend a right to use Mauer's music. "Alex Mauer produced, in collaboration with others, works for RCRU as a subcontractor, and Conatus believes that it possesses the legal right to use those collaborative works in the game," the company wrote.

The RCRU takedown follows a similar situation surrounding Starr Mazer: DSP, another game Mauer had removed from Steam via a DMCA takedown over claimed music rights. Starr Mazer's developer, Imagos, set up a GoFundMe page to fund their legal effort against that takedown and eventually got a restraining order against Mauer that led to the game's return to Steam last week.

"Imagos Softworks successfully got their DMCAs retracted by bringing me to court and getting a restraining order," Mauer told Destructoid. "Conatus could do the same. These companies think that acting like they have secured rights is the same as actually having secured rights. Neither Imagos nor Conatus have, but the public is quicker to believe them over me, just because they are game developers."

While Conatus goes through the DMCA process with Steam, River City Ransom Underground is still available on GOG as of this writing.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

I have no idea here who is in the right. I would wager though that there was no written contract with the indie developers and she offered to work on their games - probably a fairly casual conversation and arrangement, and is now cashing in the fact there was no contract assigning the rights.

I also do not how a restraining order can stop a DMCA takedown, one is for threat of harm, and the other is wholly unrelated and can be resolved through lawyers or other intermediaries. If a judge was willing to sign a restraining order, it seems to me she may be a tad unhinged.

Edit: I have not verified the claims, but others are posting that she is unhinged. All work for both companies was under contact. However she makes false claims and has even sent death threats and been involuntarily committed.

Hopefully she can get the help she needs and stop clogging up the system with BS. We have enough of that from large corporations.

"Imagos Softworks successfully got their DMCAs retracted by bringing me to court and getting a restraining order," Mauer told Destructoid. "Conatus could do the same. These companies think that acting like they have secured rights is the same as actually having secured rights. Neither Imagos nor Conatus have, but the public is quicker to believe them over me, just because they are game developers."

The TRO isn't because the public thinks so, it's because they convinced a judge far enough to get it. I admit that I don't know how difficult that might have been, nor what standards have to be met to get a TRO issued. But for whatever reason at least one trained jurist thinks they dev had a point.

Alex Mauer has been using the DMCA to take down Lets Play videos from Youtube for the explicit purpose of using them to pressure Imagos Software into paying her more money. Imagos Software provided a copy of the Work Fore Hire contract that Alex signed, but Alex kept issuing DMCA Takedowns.

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

For anyone who isn't familiar with her, Alex Mauer is a composer who doesn't understand how contract work... er, works, and doesn't understand how the DMCA works or what it's for. She's used DMCA notices to target not just the games she's done music for, but also videos of the games, of her music, and of discussions about her, and of completely unrelated games. She also threatened another musician by saying that he would lose his rights to a collaboration that he did with her, declared that he'd lost the rights within an hour of doing so, and then (unsurprisingly) DMCA'd the track in question. More importantly, she's doxxed and directly harassed people by phone, and she's sent out at least three death threats.

All of that's part of some serious mental health issues that she's been dealing with, culminating in an arrest in 2016 and a several-days-long involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward last month. This probably isn't going to go on much longer - the people she's targeting are taking legal action, Youtube has threatened to ban her for fraudulent DMCA claims, and Steam probably won't be honoring this for very long - but the whole saga is a pretty massive clusterfuck.

I have no idea here who is in the right. I would wager though that there was no written contract with the indie developers and she offered to work on their games - probably a fairly casual conversation and arrangement, and is now cashing in the fact there was no contract assigning the rights.

I also do not how a restraining order can stop a DMCA takedown, one is for threat of harm, and the other is wholly unrelated and can be resolved through lawyers or other intermediaries. If a judge was willing to sign a restraining order, it seems to me she may be a tad unhinged.

I have heard she's issued death threats. But the restraining order stops her from issuing DMCAs which can cause financial harm as well as forcing her to rescind previous DMCAs she's issued. Well, if I've read everything right and the sources are accurate.

EDIT: See rabish12's post above as it is better than my on a phone post

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

Haven't seen the contract, but if that's the case, then I guess you're right.Does anyone know how much work she's done prior to this and have other employers had these issues with her? Seems like this is a good way of putting yourself out of future employment opportunities and getting blacklisted.

For anyone who isn't familiar with her, Alex Mauer is a composer who doesn't understand how contract work... er, works, and doesn't understand how the DMCA works or what it's for. She's used DMCA notices to target not just the games she's done music for, but also videos of the games, of her music, and of discussions about her, and of completely unrelated games. She also threatened another musician by saying that he would lose his rights to a collaboration that he did with her, declared that he'd lost the rights within an hour of doing so, and then (unsurprisingly) DMCA'd the track in question. More importantly, she's doxxed and directly harassed people by phone, and she's sent out at least three death threats.

All of that's part of some serious mental health issues that she's been dealing with, culminating in an arrest in 2016 and a several-days-long involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward last month. This probably isn't going to go on much longer - the people she's targeting are taking legal action, Youtube has threatened to ban her for fraudulent DMCA claims, and Steam probably won't be honoring this for very long - but the whole saga is a pretty massive clusterfuck.

Yeah, I'm shocked how much this article left out. This is clearly a mentally ill person in a downward spiral. The death threats are especially disturbing. Alex has literally told the targets of her DMCA attacks that once they file a counterclaim, and Alex gets their address through it, Alex is going to come and kill them.

I mean that goes beyond just "Go die in a fire" twitter egg bullshit. This is a person who's clearly mentally ill, explicitly outlining how they will commit violence against their legal opponents. Alex has also threatened to kill themself, but not before they kill the people they are suing. I thought this was all over once Alex was taken into custody over these suicide/homicide threats. But then Alex was released somehow, which is utterly baffling to me.

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

This is why there needs to be penalties for false DMCA claims. Currently the deck is so stacked in favor of the accuser. There really is no legal reason not to do this kind of shotgun with DMCA tactic to coerce some companies to give you money.

As some have pointed out there is a penalty for perjury but that requires proving intent. You need to prove not just that the claim was false but the person KNEW the claim was false. In the vast majority of cases you will never be able to prove that even if the claim is false.

SidAlpha's coverage has been especially illuminating. The short version, as coloured by me, is that Alex Mauer is a stupid, self-victimizing lunatic whose mental fall-apart is unfortunately being enabled by the DMCA takedown mechanism. I guess we can add "psychologically unhealthy" to the list of reasons why the DMCA takedown mechanism is flawed.

(EDIT: I don't know anything about her medical diagnoses, and trying to divine mental disturbance from ostensibly legal actions isn't really worth my time. She filed a bunch of DMCA claims she had to know weren't legally enforceable, did it for ostensibly grandiose reasons, and then sent a bunch of death threats to people. If her mental health wasn't actually at issue, no one would have any issue calling her a lunatic garbage-person whose lunatic garbage-behavior was enabled by a lunatic garbage-mechanism by one of the most hated laws on the books. But apparently (reportedly), mental health issues are in play here. The above paragraph was not written in reference to known and/or diagnosed mental problems, it was a characterization of her behavior that was meant to be extremely pejorative, but not literal.)

The company Effects Associated were hired by Cohen to supply some of the special effects shots. When the shots were delivered, Cohen was not satisfied with shots of exploding factory buildings[13] and paid only half (c. $8,000) of the agreed price for those shots. Effects Associated brought an action against Cohen in court to claim full compensation, but also because the parties had no written copyright agreement regarding the use of the shots. The trial court decided in favor of Cohen, ruling that there was an "implied agreement" for the non-exclusive use of the shots in the film. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit confirmed the ruling, and confirmed that Effects Associated still retained the copyright for use outside of The Stuff.[14]

So yeah, implied non-exclusive license, worst case scenario. Assuming uncritically that the RCRU devs are on the up-and-up.

Until there is an actionable penalty for false claims, this will continue to happen.

There actually is, if those claims are made knowingly. It's considered perjury, and she's being taken to court over it.

The barrier is astonishingly high. One needs to prove the person knew the claim was false. In 99.9% of false DMCA claims you are never going to be able to prove that. There should be penalties for false claims regardless of intent. If you think you have a right to make a claim and it turns out you don't you should be stuck with a fine for a false claim. It doesn't have to be a massive fine just large enough to discourage abuse. Ideally one would need to deposit the fine amount up front when making the claim. If the claim is legit you get the deposit back, if it isn't you forfeit it. Without that the DMCA takedown mechanism is almost completely onesided and you will see this kind of abuse continue.

Now since this case is so over the top it might be the 1 in 1000 where you could actually prove intent but even if they win here it doesn't really solve the underlying problem.

SidAlpha's coverage has been especially illuminating. The short version, as coloured by me, is that Alex Mauer is a stupid, self-victimizing lunatic whose mental fall-apart is unfortunately being enabled by the DMCA takedown mechanism. I guess we can add "psychologically unhealthy" to the list of reasons why the DMCA takedown mechanism is flawed.

The company Effects Associated were hired by Cohen to supply some of the special effects shots. When the shots were delivered, Cohen was not satisfied with shots of exploding factory buildings[13] and paid only half (c. $8,000) of the agreed price for those shots. Effects Associated brought an action against Cohen in court to claim full compensation, but also because the parties had no written copyright agreement regarding the use of the shots. The trial court decided in favor of Cohen, ruling that there was an "implied agreement" for the non-exclusive use of the shots in the film. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit confirmed the ruling, and confirmed that Effects Associated still retained the copyright for use outside of The Stuff.[14]

So yeah, implied non-exclusive license, worst case scenario. Assuming uncritically that the RCRU devs are on the up-and-up.

They would have to be on the up and up: RCRU is a licensed game, as Arc System Works currently holds the rights. Putting onesself at fire from both sides is suicidal at best.

Until there is an actionable penalty for false claims, this will continue to happen.

There actually is, if those claims are made knowingly. It's considered perjury, and she's being taken to court over it.

The barrier is astonishingly high. One needs to prove the person knew the claim was false. In 99.9% of false DMCA claims you are never going to be able to prove that. There should be penalties for false claims regardless of intent. If you think you have a right to make a claim and it turns out you don't you should be stuck with a fine for a false claim.

Now since this case is so over the top it might be the 1 in 1000 cases where you could actually prove intent (although I am not so sure) but even if they win here it doesn't really solve the underlying problem.

Sure, but it's still worth noting that the bar (while absurdly high) does exist, and that there's a very good chance that it's been crossed here. I don't think any even remotely plausible explanation exists that leaves her ignorant at this point, outside of the explanation that she's that unbalanced (in which case she's got far bigger problems, given everything else she's been doing).

For anyone who isn't familiar with her, Alex Mauer is a composer who doesn't understand how contract work... er, works, and doesn't understand how the DMCA works or what it's for. She's used DMCA notices to target not just the games she's done music for, but also videos of the games, of her music, and of discussions about her, and of completely unrelated games. She also threatened another musician by saying that he would lose his rights to a collaboration that he did with her, declared that he'd lost the rights within an hour of doing so, and then (unsurprisingly) DMCA'd the track in question. More importantly, she's doxxed and directly harassed people by phone, and she's sent out at least three death threats.

All of that's part of some serious mental health issues that she's been dealing with, culminating in an arrest in 2016 and a several-days-long involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward last month. This probably isn't going to go on much longer - the people she's targeting are taking legal action, Youtube has threatened to ban her for fraudulent DMCA claims, and Steam probably won't be honoring this for very long - but the whole saga is a pretty massive clusterfuck.

Yeah, I'm shocked how much this article left out. This is clearly a mentally ill person in a downward spiral. The death threats are especially disturbing. Alex has literally told the targets of her DMCA attacks that once they file a counterclaim, and Alex gets their address through it, Alex is going to come and kill them.

I mean that goes beyond just "Go die in a fire" twitter egg bullshit. This is a person who's clearly mentally ill, explicitly outlining how they will commit violence against their legal opponents. Alex has also threatened to kill themself, but not before they kill the people they are suing. I thought this was all over once Alex was taken into custody over these suicide/homicide threats. But then Alex was released somehow, which is utterly baffling to me.

Okay, so she's attempting to thwart DMCA counterclaims through death threats? After being committed once already? I understand Ars' desire, misguided though it may occasionally be, to be fair and even-handed in its coverage, but this is context the article really ought to provide.

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

Maybe it's different in the US, but you can't own someone else's creative work. For example, I work for an architecture firm, and we pay a photographer for their photos. We can never own those photos---they are always the photographers. But we can hold an unlimited license for their use.

It is different in the US.

Quote:

In the copyright law of the United States, a work made for hire (work for hire or WFH) is a work subject to copyright that is created by an employee as part of his job, or some limited types of works for which all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation. Work for hire is a statutorily defined term (17 U.S.C. § 101), so a work for hire is not created merely because parties to an agreement state that the work is a work for hire. It is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally recognized author of that work. According to copyright law in the United States and certain other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is "made for hire", the employer—not the employee—is considered the legal author. In some countries, this is known as corporate authorship. The entity serving as an employer may be a corporation or other legal entity, an organization, or an individual.

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

Maybe it's different in the US, but you can't own someone else's creative work. For example, I work for an architecture firm, and we pay a photographer for their photos. We can never own those photos---they are always the photographers. But we can hold an unlimited license for their use.

It can be different here. A "work for hire" is owned, in all ways, by the company that commissioned that work. I suspect it's that way in your country too. If a software developer writes some code, it usually belongs to his company, not to him. He can't take it with him when he goes to a new job.

Okay, so she's attempting to thwart DMCA counterclaims through death threats? After being committed once already? I understand Ars' desire, misguided though it may occasionally be, to be fair and even-handed in its coverage, but this is context the article really ought to provide.

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

Maybe it's different in the US, but you can't own someone else's creative work. For example, I work for an architecture firm, and we pay a photographer for their photos. We can never own those photos---they are always the photographers. But we can hold an unlimited license for their use.

You can have all different sorts of employment situations, but it is highly unlikely that work-for-hire doesn't exist in your country. Whenever someone in your country produces news, do you really think the cameraman is the sole copyright holder? Because in most places, fixation (and the person doing said fixation) is what creates copyright. Without work-for-hire, the cameraman owns the video, the audio gaffer owns the audio, and even the most basic commerical would have copyright split a thousand different ways to represent the copyrightable contributions of a thousand different contributors.

For anyone who isn't familiar with her, Alex Mauer is a composer who doesn't understand how contract work... er, works, and doesn't understand how the DMCA works or what it's for. She's used DMCA notices to target not just the games she's done music for, but also videos of the games, of her music, and of discussions about her, and of completely unrelated games. She also threatened another musician by saying that he would lose his rights to a collaboration that he did with her, declared that he'd lost the rights within an hour of doing so, and then (unsurprisingly) DMCA'd the track in question. More importantly, she's doxxed and directly harassed people by phone, and she's sent out at least three death threats.

All of that's part of some serious mental health issues that she's been dealing with, culminating in an arrest in 2016 and a several-days-long involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward last month. This probably isn't going to go on much longer - the people she's targeting are taking legal action, Youtube has threatened to ban her for fraudulent DMCA claims, and Steam probably won't be honoring this for very long - but the whole saga is a pretty massive clusterfuck.

Yeah, I'm shocked how much this article left out. This is clearly a mentally ill person in a downward spiral. The death threats are especially disturbing. Alex has literally told the targets of her DMCA attacks that once they file a counterclaim, and Alex gets their address through it, Alex is going to come and kill them.

I mean that goes beyond just "Go die in a fire" twitter egg bullshit. This is a person who's clearly mentally ill, explicitly outlining how they will commit violence against their legal opponents. Alex has also threatened to kill themself, but not before they kill the people they are suing. I thought this was all over once Alex was taken into custody over these suicide/homicide threats. But then Alex was released somehow, which is utterly baffling to me.

Okay, so she's attempting to thwart DMCA counterclaims through death threats? After being committed once already? I understand Ars' desire, misguided though it may occasionally be, to be fair and even-handed in its coverage, but this is context the article really ought to provide.

If you think that's bad, you should have seen the Destructoid article as originally published, where she's made to look like she's just a victim.

As much as I feel most DMCA requests are dubious, this one seems pretty legit and warranted. You can't just be using someone else's work for you own financial gain without kicking a little back to the creator.

This isn't legit. Conatus has publicly published her contract, and it was work for hire. She has been paid already, and the contract stipulates that they would own the rights.

Maybe it's different in the US, but you can't own someone else's creative work. For example, I work for an architecture firm, and we pay a photographer for their photos. We can never own those photos---they are always the photographers. But we can hold an unlimited license for their use.

In the US in most cases the content creator owns the rights to the content. However in a work for hire situation the contract changes that status. The owner is the entity paying for the work. They enforce this by showing the contract specifies it is a work made for hire.

Okay, so she's attempting to thwart DMCA counterclaims through death threats? After being committed once already? I understand Ars' desire, misguided though it may occasionally be, to be fair and even-handed in its coverage, but this is context the article really ought to provide.